What To Do About Ransom
by Wijida
Summary: More in the novelization of "Equinox", the scene where Janeway is on the bridge...and so mad she could pull someones hair out... and only Chakotay dares approach her...I've written the scene I wanted to directly follow it. :)


**Disclaimer**: Voyager is the crème de la crème, the cream of the crop…in my humble opinion, oh, Paramount, and you, those whom own the rights to Voyager…you are so gracious, and I borrow your characters only as tools with which to extend the reach of my own imagination.

What To Do About Ransom 

By Manda (Mizuno Ami)

_ Only Chakotay dared approach her as she lowered into her command chair._

_ "Captain?" he urged._

_ She dug her fingernails into the fake leather on the chair's arms. She didn't look at him, or anyone._

_ "Let's try," She said, "to make first contact the right way_."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Duty shift ending. She couldn't have another second on the bridge, with tension so palpable you could cut it with a plasma torch. And oh, she would have given anything for a plasma torch, to melt away the anger and hostility she felt toward Ransom at that moment. The thought of what he and his crew had been doing _infuriated_ her as she had never been infuriated, and as she slammed her fists onto her ready room desk, did she realize she had not the slightest idea of how to get _past _it.

"Captain?" Chakotay stood in the doorway- she hadn't noticed his arrival, and had it been anyone but he…she would have reprimanded and dismissed them in the same instant, however, she found solace in his presense, and waved for him to step further in. 

"Chakotay. Have a seat." She reached to massage her scalp with stiff fingers, hearing each and every crack in the joints as if it were the ice breaking on a lake back home, Indiana winter so reminiscent of the cold she felt in her bones at that very moment. She found herself hoping desperately that the entire mess would simply go away, leaving her with a fit ship and a smiling crew, all of them none the wiser. Her first officer took the seat she offered him without a sound, perhaps choosing instead to let her take the first step. Somehow his waiting seemed to make it easier for the words to form on her tongue, for her to become accustomed to the tastes before letting them flow free. And they did. "Where did I go wrong? Am I making the right decision, or condemning Ransom simply because he's a Starfleet Captain who has turned his back on _every_ principle we've pledged our lives to? Challenging his authority, his judgement calls? We've drawn the line more times than I can remember, close enough that I could _feel _the fires of hell…and they were hot."

She inhaled, seeing a glimmer in Chakotay's eye- the signal that she was rambling, but she didn't care. It was so rarely that she spoke out at all- when she felt the need, she ran with it, all the way. 

"It's as if I were holding a crayon with an unsteady hand…the line changes, Chakotay…every day. And I don't know where to stop it."

"You're doing what you think is right."

"What _I_ think. But _is_ it right? Where do I drop the crayon and let the next generation take over?" She eyed her first officer wearily, expecting him to be her Jiminy Cricket, the good concience which appeared at her right shoulder and told her where her morals need lie. Did they lie there, really, or were they already dead, and she too numb to notice? "There's no higher authority to report to, Chakotay, and unless I become convinced that Rudolph Ransom did what he did under some sort of alien influence…then it looks like I'm the only Captain out here, as well."

They sat in silence, neither quite knowing what to say in the heavy tension. Again, she found herself wishing for a plasma torch, or, at that point, tricobalt devices callibrated to destroy the monsterous headache forming behind her left eye. If she had one, she thought, then she might easily turn it apon the entire universe as well, successfully destroying all of their troubles in the blink of an eye.

"You can't think that way," Chakotay interrupted her silent reverie with his determined statement, so boldly brought alive that for a moment she felt her only option was to believe him. "That's not how Ransom thought, or he wouldn't have made it this far. Kathryn…don't start questioning every decision you've made since we came to be here. If you have _any_ doubts…"

"Isn't that _your _job- voicing my misgivings for me?" She queried, breaking the icy expanse with a light chuckle. "I thought that was somewhere in the job description."

"Hardly. That's akin to making attempts at interpreting the hunting patterns of the Hirogen before you've ever encountered a Hirogen hunting party." 

Janeway laughed aloud, realizing, for the first time, just how good it felt to be able to laugh, a slight release from the 'everyday' tensions, which seemed to constantly plague her body. Relaxation be damned- she'd no sooner sit down to relax than be presented with an onslaught of typical problems- typical, because they dealt with a homesick crew who desperately needed a consoling voice. Typical, because they involved plotting a Starchart through unfamiliar territory, again, for the tenth time in a month. She wanted more than the life where she would wake up day by day and be forced to deal with so many hardships that were not only her own. For five minutes, she would have given anything to be able to deal with her own problems, find solutions, rather than consentrate on the pain and push it aside, allowing it to merely fester. _How did Captain Ransom feel, waking up every day to a broken home? He didn't even have the luxury_ _of turning to a morale officer, or a steady shoulder like Chakotay…_

The voice in her head was persistant. The voice in her head would _not _go away.

"And just when I think I know what you're up to-"

"What?" She gave Chakotay a confused and questioning glance, hand pressing against her temple wearily.

"You went silent on me. Just when I was starting to figure out what you're up to- your habits- you pulled a rabbit out of your hat." 

"If I consentrate, then perhaps I can pull out a Starfleet Admiral," Janeway mused aloud. "What I wouldn't give for another set of shoulders to put that decision apon."

"I can't make that decision for you, Kathryn, but I _can_ help with the weight of it," Chakotay's offer was clearly heartfelt as well as duty-bound. She knew he wanted nothing more than to take a piece of her mantle, to allow her sufficient time to rest and inhale deeply, the light feeling only replenishing her for the journey. She appreciated the gesture, knowing that he didn't simply make it out of obligation, but loyalty and determination as well as his admiration for a friend. 

"And if I ever go mad, Chakotay, I may need you to do just that," She promised. "But for now, we all need to understand that our obligation at this point is to hunt down Captain Ransom." _If only my face wouldn't harden this way, _she thought sadly, feeling the skin draw so taut apon her cheeks, her jaw clenching at the mere spoken word of Rudolph Ransom. She couldn't hate the man, but the thought of another Starfleet Captain injuring her ship, crippling it so that she found it difficult to even take the deepest breath on Voyager's decks without knowing what it cost the already taxed systems. "After that…we'll see where it goes from there." 

He said very little during the long silence which followed, and yet…yet she felt an odd relief from his simple presence, even knowing he disagreed with her priorities. The time she spent away from the bridge was time which allowed the tension to leak from her bones, lightening not her spirit, but, she surmised, her body mass alone. If this was what the scant minutes she had available were to offer her, then she would take it, if only to keep her sanity clutched to her by the thinnest of life threads.

It was the most she could let herself have…until Ransom was caught.

"I'll let B'Elanna know that she's going to be working on the warp engines." Chakotay rose, his own spine ramrod straight- or, she hoped, she was imagining the sudden white elephant which danced so forebodingly apon them. She rose after him, to see him out, and as they approached the door, her hand found purchase in his shoulder, finger squeezing tightly.

"Chakotay…I hope I have you with me on this." He looked at her as if not really seeing…then again, perhaps to look at her was to see a demon as fierce as that which she thought Ransom to be. Chakotay didn't see what she saw- he saw his own captain taking steps in the wrong direction, her morals falling to pieces in her wake.

"I'll see you on the bridge." And as he left, his short reply echoing in her ears, Kathryn Janeway felt the weight settle apon her shoulders again, the white elephant performing the Dying Swan elegantly in the corner of her Ready Room. 

Dying swan, white elephant.

"After I've exercised my demons." She whispered. "And after I figure out what to do about Ransom."

-Fin


End file.
